Thirty years since the Portuguese Revolution—Part 2

By Paul Mitchell, World Socialist Web Site, 16 July 2004

Following the military coup on April 25, 1974, an explosive movement
of the working class threatened to lead to revolution in Portugal.

The coup was led by the Armed Forces Movement (MFA, Movimento das
Forças Armadas), which installed General António de Spínola as
president and head of a seven-man Junta (JNS).

The ruling elite were able to prevent revolution and allow a breathing
space to defend capitalism by relying on the reformist Socialist Party
(PSP, Partido Socialista Português), the Stalinist Portuguese
Communist Party (PCP, Partido Comunista Português) and the petty
bourgeois radical groups.

Following the coup workers took over factories, offices and shops and
peasants occupied farmlands. Half a million marched through the
Portuguese capital, Lisbon, a week later on May Day. The revolutionary
atmosphere spread through the armed forces, with soldiers and sailors
marching alongside the workers carrying banners calling for socialism.

The First Provisional Government

Spínola appointed the First Provisional government on May 16 1974,
consisting of seven military ministers and two seats each for the PCP,
PSP and semi-fascist Popular Democratic Party (PPD, Partido Popular
Democrático). The PPD had been allowed to function as a semi-official
opposition during the last few years of the Salazar-Caetano
regime. Its leader, Francisco Sá Carneiro, accepted the inclusion of
the PCP in the Provisional Government knowing the vital role it could
play in policing working class opposition.

Throughout the revolution the PCP clung to the state apparatus through
the MFA, thereby tying the working class to the ruling elite.

To enforce labour discipline and implement the austerity programme in
the MFA's “battle for production”, PCP leader Álvaro
Cunhal was appointed a minister without portfolio and the PCP's
Avelino Gonçalves became minister of labour. The PCP was to occupy
this post in subsequent provisional governments too, exhorting workers
to “Save the National Economy” and condemning any
manifestation of independent activity by the working class.

The PCP was also part of the MFA's governing council.

The MFA emerged as the most important decision-making body in the
country. The leadership of the MFA rested with the Council of Twenty,
whose decisions usually required ratification by the 240 delegates
comprising the General Assembly. The Council of Twenty included the
president and the six other members of the JSN, the five military
ministers (the prime minister, two ministers without portfolio, and
the ministers of the interior and of labour) and Otelo Saraiva de
Carvalho the commander of COPCON “armed intervention”
units. Throughout the revolution the leaders of COPCON promised they
would “eventually” arm the working class, but their real
role was to prevent the development of popular vigilance groups or
workers' militias.

The MFA's political programme called for the creation of a
provisional government that would organise elections for a Constituent
Assembly tasked with drawing up a constitution.

The MFA's rise to prominence can be attributed to the PCP, which
promoted the concept of “the alliance of the MFA and
people” and glorified so-called leftist military generals like
Carvalho and Vasco Gonçalves. The PCP stated, “The MFA is the
motive force and guarantee of our revolution … the PCP holds
that the alliance between the popular movement and the MFA is a
necessary and decisive factor for the establishment of a democratic
regime, a prime guarantee of the development of the revolutionary
process.”

At the time of the April coup the PSP numbered no more than 200
people. By the following year it had grown to 60,000
members—mainly white-collar workers and professionals. Its growth
can be put down to the actions of the PCP and radical groups and the
support it received from the Western powers.

The PCP strengthened the right wing in Portugal by splitting the
working class with their collaboration with the MFA, seizing the
PSP's paper Republica and physically attacking PSP meetings. By
denouncing workers' strikes, calling for a monolithic union under
its control and supporting the MFA's military dictatorship, the
PCP allowed PSP leader Mário Soares to pose as a more radical,
democratic, and even more Marxist than the PCP's Cunhal.

The Western powers were alarmed that Portugal—a founding member
of the NATO pact—confronted a revolution. US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger told Soares that he faced being the “Kerensky
[the Russian leader whose short-lived rule preceded the Bolshevik
Revolution] of Portugal.” The result was an influx of foreign
financial aid to the organisation, particularly from the British
Labour Party and French Socialist Party. In February 1975 Edward
Kennedy attended a round table discussion with the PSP leaders.

The first PSP congress in December 1974 received fraternal greetings
from social democratic parties from around the world. The guest
speaker was Santiago Carillo, the leader of the Spanish Communist
Party.

The Anti-Strike Laws

Following the coup, strikes hit all sectors of the economy. Workers
set up committees that demanded a minimum wage, the arrest of fascist
sympathisers, workers' control and socialism. On May 15 1974,
8,400 workers occupied the Lisnave shipyards. Timex workers struck on
June 3, continuing the struggle started in November 1973, and two
weeks later 25,000 CTT workers went on strike, paralysing the post and
telephone services. Newspapers were taken over and the manifestos of
the parties filled their pages.

The former corporate unions, which the PCP had taken over through its
Intersindical union federation, denounced the strikes as
“irresponsible” and their demands as
“impossible” and organised a demonstration in Lisbon
against them. The army was used to break up the strike at Timex and
protect the factory and its machinery. The broadcast of a cultural
festival in which the theatre group Comuna attacked the Catholic
Church was switched off on the orders of “higher
authorities”.

The Confederation of Portuguese Industry (CIP, Confederação da
Indústria Portuguesa) warned that the working class actions were
“dangerous to the national economy.” The CIP called in
public for a Western-type democracy, but many of its members also
funded fascist parties and organisations, including the one founded by
Salazar himself—the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). The de Melo
family's CUF monopoly bankrolled the Democratic and Social Centre
party (CDS—Centro Democrático Social, forerunner of the
right-wing Popular Party that is in today's coalition government).

The CDS was founded by Freitas do Amaral, former adviser to Caetano
and supported by the Catholic Opus Dei. However, these organisations
had no popular support. The first CDS congress in January 1975 had to
be abandoned because of riots outside. Further congresses were held in
secret.

On August 27, the provisional government introduced an anti-strike law
that the PCP and PSP helped draft. Strikes were only allowed if they
were deemed to be “in the spirit of the Programme of the
MFA”. All strikes had to have ballots and a 30-day cooling off
period. No strikes were allowed in the essential services and
political or solidarity strikes and occupations were banned. The next
day army units including COPCON surrounded Lisbon airport, which the
workers at the state airline Transportes Aéreos Portugueses (TAP) had
occupied. Workers who refused to obey military orders were arrested
and told they would only be reinstated “on condition they took
no further part in political activity”.

Two more coups

The actions of the social democrats and the Stalinist gave the
reaction a second wind. On September 10, 1974, Spínola called on the
“silent majority … to awaken and defend themselves from
extremist totalitarianism”. Plans were made for a demonstration
two weeks later. In response to troop movements and the closing down
of radio and TV stations workers erected barricades and thwarted the
attempted coup. But Spínola was simply allowed to resign as president
to be replaced by his old boss General Costa Gomes.

A new provisional government was set up, minus Spínola and three other
members of the JNS, which was to last until the next right-wing coup
attempt in March 1975.

In January 1975, a Federation of Workers' Committees called
Inter-Empresas was formed linking Timex, TAP, Lisnave and other
companies. One of its first actions was the organisation of a
demonstration against the arrival of NATO ships in Lisbon docks. The
provisional government forbade all demonstrations and the PCP attacked
the organisers. Despite this, 40,000 people took part.

The government then approved the economic plan drawn up by Major
Ernesto Augusto Melo Antunes, who was a member of the “Group of
Nine” officers in the MFA, and which was endorsed by the MFA
General Assembly. The plan excluded “the social-democratic
control of the management of capitalism … but it does not
exclude a pluralistic society … the class struggle now under way
must take into account the alternative role which the middle classes
can now play.”

It called for partial nationalisations, the take over of some large
and badly managed estates and increased foreign investment.

Spínola attempted another coup in early March 1975 sanctioned by
Kissinger and US Ambassador Frank Carlucci, but his troops mutinied at
the last minute. Spínola fled to Spain and then Brazil. Many
businessmen behind the coup attempt were arrested, including seven
members of the Espirito Santo family who owned one of Portugal's
largest banks and the de Melos, but all were later released.

The JNS was abolished and replaced by the Council of the
Revolution. In the wake of working class resistance a fourth
provisional government was formed that nationalised the commercial
banks (but not three international banks). Because the banks were
often holding companies, the government took control of almost all the
country's newspapers, insurance companies, hotels, construction
companies and many other kinds of businesses—equivalent to 70
percent of the country's gross national product. The minimum wage
was raised and a programme of agrarian reform promised.

The PCP dutifully declared that business had been “nationalised
in the service of the people”, but the capitalist
nationalisation proposed differed from that carried out in most
Western countries after the World War II only in extent. Economic and
state power still lay in the hands of the bourgeoisie, if only in part
through their shadow in the social democratic and Stalinist
parties. Nationalisation aimed to provide a more stable infrastructure
and environment for private enterprise and to limit the power of the
workers committees by making the appointment of managers a state
function.

The Constituent Assembly

Elections were held on April 25, 1975, for the Constituent Assembly to
draft a constitution. The PSP won nearly 38 percent of the vote, the
PPD took 26.4 percent and the PCP 13 percent.

Following the elections and with no sign of the promised agrarian
reforms, movements in the countryside joined the insurrectionary
situation in the cities. Landless agricultural workers in the south
seized the large farming estates on which they worked and started
developing them collectively through organisations such as the Red
Committee of Alentejo. The PCP called the occupations
“anarchistic” and proposed that all future occupations be
controlled by the unions (which they in turn controlled).

Between June and August 1975, following the exit of the PSP and PPD
from the fourth provisional government over the Republica affair, the
PCP and its allies were left in virtual control of the state and the
ministries. The “Gonçalvists”, as the military wing of the
PCP was known, dominated the MFA's Council of the Revolution.

The MFA and PCP convened a Front of Revolutionary Unity (FUR, Frente
de Unidade Revolucionária) to “institutionalise” the
“pact” between the MFA and the people. This involved the
formation of local assemblies, municipal assemblies and a National
Popular Assembly, which would replace the provisional government. The
aim of the MFA proposal was to consolidate the control of bourgeois
military officers, destroy the independent character of the
workers' committees that had sprung up and prevent moves towards
dual power and soviets/workers' councils. The assemblies could
only start their work after “an evaluation by the MFA” and
would be subject to military control at all levels to preserve their
“independence from all parties.” No political
organisations were to be permitted in the armed forces except the MFA
itself.